Preliminary Characterization and Evaluation of Landraces of Indian Spinach (Basella spp. L.) for Agro-economic and Quality Traits

Indian spinach (Basella spp. L.) is an underutilized and underexploited indigenous leafy vegetable which has high nutritional and medicinal value and extensively used in the sub-continent. Landrace germplasm is endowed with rich genetic variability for various yield and quality traits. A total of six accessions collected through an exploration during 2010 were pre-bred by selfing during the October-January cropping season in 2011. These landraces were evaluated in a randomized block design with four replications in June-September, 2012 at Vegetable Research Station, Dr. Y. S. R. Horticultural University, Rajendranagar to assess the genetic diversity, variability, heritability and genetic advance for yield and its components in the material. Multivariate analysis following Ward`s minimum variance-method revealed distinct clustering pattern. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among all genotypes for all the studied traits indicating considerable variability among ecotypes for most of the measured parameters. There was significant variability for genetic potential of all genotypes for different traits under study. The highest variability at genotypic level was observed for stalk yield (73.95%) followed by leaf-stalk ratio (46.70%) and weight of tender shoot (41.25%). Low to high estimates of broad sense heritability were found in different traits. High estimates of heritability (>60%) coupled with high genetic advance as percent of mean (>20%) for petiole length, internodal length, weight of tender shoot, stalk yield, leaf-stalk ratio and harvest index revealed that most likely the heritability is due to additive gene effects and selection may be effective.